The Bone Cage- Self/ World Relation

This book I can easily relate to because I am an athlete myself, maybe not at that level but I also love to compete in sports. I loved reading this book because I always wondered what went through Olympian athletes minds- How they felt before a race or if they really wanted to be training that hard. I found that in order to become an athlete at such an elite level, you really want to put your life into it and you got to love it. There are so many people today that dream to become NHL or NFL players, but to become an Olympian is something very different. A person today will have the skills to become an athlete in the NFL but if someone told them they weren’t going to be paid- more than half would decline the offer. Everything today is about money. People think of how rich the professionals get, not the fact that they want to train hard to become the best. (Maybe 2 out of 20 would think that) This is not the case for Olympians in my opinion; and I’m talking Canadian Olympians. They get paid barely any money to put their life on hold to train harder than any athlete in the world so they can represent our country. They clearly don’t do it for the money; they do it to become the best and because this is something they are passionate about. I have always thought this and after reading The Bone Cage it just inspired me even more to continue doing what I love- running.

The Bone Cage- Plot

The Bone Cage is now one of my favourite books. Being an athlete myself, I love how I can see how other athletes think and what they go through, especially Sadie and Digger. (Being athletes at elite levels) The plot of the book is so passionate and the way Angie describes the lives of the athletes makes it even more compelling because of its realism. The plot begins with the situation the athletes are in and how good they are. Sadie wins the Olympic trial race and so does Digger in his wrestling match. They both go through strenuous routines but things a long the way set them back. Sadie’s Grandma dies and Digger’s best friend falls into a deep depression because he failed the last chance of getting to the Olympics. I felt like I knew them personally because the plot brought you into other aspects of their life that didn’t just consist of training. You got to literally see the emotions they felt and everything they thought in any situation they were in; whether during hard practices or relationships. The plot made the lives of the two main characters seem so real, and the passion behind everything made it such a great book. The theme should be passion. Everything the athletes do in their lives is full of love and affection.

Upon Completion

        I believe Pi’s story. I believe that he was stranded on a raft with four wild animals including a zebra, hyena, orang-utan, and Tiger. I believe he tamed a Tiger and visited an algae island that turned acidic at night. I think if I was to have been told the second story first and then his story, I would have believed the second because it is something that seems more real. The second story never changed the strength of my opinion on the first one but rather irritated me that Pi would make up a new story just to please the investigators. If someone didn’t believe my story after everything I had been through at sea, I would say ‘I guess your gunna have to believe because that is the true story.’ Since the first story was so long and had so much detail that I felt like I was there with him sometimes experiencing it all, the second story actually just felt like a story he made up on the spot that only shared character similarities. So in the end Pi’s story was what I believed and the second story had no affect on my opinion on what was really the true story. 

'Other Self"

       When I think of my ‘other self,’ I think of something that would represent the complete opposite of who I am. I decided that the perfect match for my other self was indeed a three-toed sloth. These animals spend up to eighteen hours of sleep everyday! I’ve sometimes wished I could be one of those people who just go home, do nothing and sleep or watch TV. (That’s my lazy side talking) But I’m not like that. I actually rarely just watch TV and I don’t think I’ve ever taken the bus straight home after school and walked into my house seeing the time as only 3:00pm. But instead I choose to work out or be on a team that leaves me walking in the door having to read the clock as 5:00pm. Also a sloth is quite dirty. In fact a green algae grows on its coarse hair and communities of a parasiticmoth live in the depths of its coat producing caterpillars which graze on the alga-covered hair. This is defiantly the opposite of me. Ya of course you have the days where you may not shower (example camping for a week) but I can say that I like to be clean and not look like a grease ball. Also the first thing that some people in the class said would best describe my other self is a cheetah because of its speed. I may have speed but I needed to find an animal that suits the complete opposite of me and since a sloth’s muscles are such that it is quite incapable of moving at any speed whatsoever. This is the speed of my other self. Finally the first characteristic I learned about a sloth was from the book Life of Pi in which it was said that a sloth is almost blind. This was the one characteristic that brought me first to the sloth. Although a sloths sight is retrospect to mine, I think your other self should share one thing in common. So the fact that we both can probably not see whose waving at us from 10 metres ahead (maybe even 6 metres, have yet to find out since I constantly where my contacts)  makes me laugh that this is the one similarity we share because it’s so true. Overall I think the Sloth is the perfect representation of my ‘other self.’

Life of Pi - Chapters 97 - 100

        At the end of Life of Pi, the Japanese investors clearly don’t believe Pi’s story - even while he was telling the story they were contemplating almost everything he said. Like how the orang-utan was floating towards the boat on bananas, or how he managed to survive the entire 227 day journey with a live Tiger on board. This is why Pi changes his story when they ask for the ‘better story.’ Pi told another story because he wanted to show the difference between a regular story and what they call the better story. People only believe the dull boring story’s with no animals, just a regular survival story; that’s what they wanted to hear. So Pi changed it so there were no animals, the algae island was never visited yet he still had the story irregular and more interesting than a regular story. This story didn't please the investigators. When they heard the truth (the ‘real story’) it was so disturbing that they fled back to the first story, despite its flaws. It's less believable but more comforting and that's what they prefer; that’s what people prefer. So in the end the investigators ask for a better story but end up believing in the first story told because this was a more pleasing story and was something they’d rather believe happen compared to the gruesomeness of the second story. 

Life of Pi - Chapters 92 - 93

       The algae island Pi comes across has great similarities to the Garden of Eden. The island comes across as sort of magical and non believable at first. When Pi was at a state where his body needed water and food or else he was going to lose all strength and die, is when his raft came upon this island. It had an ongoing supply of both sweet algae and fresh water, so Pi and Richard Parker could eat and drink as much food and water as they needed without having to converse it for the days to come. Along with the algae that Pi ate, the island had thousands of meerkats that Richard Parker acquired to. They both lived on the island for a longer time and soon gained all their strength back that they had lost from being at sea. Pi one day discovered something that changed his mind about the precious island; he discovered a fruit in the tree that turned out to be human teeth wrapped tightly in a ball of leaves. Along with this devastating discovery he found that the ground turned deathly acidic at night. Pi now wanted to leave. He didn’t want to die in a place that was unknown where no one had ever discovered; he wanted to exist and not be left ever unknown to the world. This island is very similar to the Garden of Eden. Like the island, the garden has a plentiful supply of food, and both can be eaten from as much as desired, excluding the exception of the tree of knowledge. The downfall to both the island and the garden is that they both have an evil aspect to them.  At night, the island goes acidic, and in the garden, the serpent came in the form of evil persuading Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. In both situations the beings never return. God forbids Adam and Eve from returning to the Garden of Eden and Pi decides to leave the island as is it also a sign of evil.

Life of Pi - Chapters 90 - 91

        At this point in the story Pi and Richard Parker go blind. This is due to malnutrition and other medical problems but that is not the true meaning as to why they went blind. Pi first hears a voice which then starts speaking to him. Pi responds with what is on his mind- food.  The voice speaks of beef and brains and all sorts of food that Pi finds distasteful. From here Pi assumes he is hearing the voice of Richard Parker. The reason why I think Pi concludes that this is Richard Parker who he is talking to his because the voice seems like a meat eating being like he has become. Pi asks the voice if he has ever killed anyone, and the voice says yes, a man and a woman. I think the reason for his blindness and his encounter with ‘another blind boy’ is a way that he will find his existentialism. This other being is someone Pi never wants to become, so by meeting this boy, Pi can compare himself to him and can see a side of him that he doesn’t want to ever release. The voice belongs to a castaway like Pi, and they join their boats together. The man climbs aboard Pi’s boat and tries to strangle and cannibalize him. But when he steps down onto the floor of the boat, Richard Parker kills him. Pi cries for the dead man which relives some of his blindness. He then rinses his eyes with seawater and his vision comes back. Yann Martel included this is the story because he wanted this to be a major stepping stone to Pi’s realization of his meaning in life. After meeting this man Pi knew he never wanted to become like him, and this imagination was exactly the opposite of who Pi was. Pi never wanted to kill a person, or eat like a savage. So being blind just symbolized that Pi still had no sight or vision as to what his meaning was. But once the hallucination had disappeared, Pi’s eyes opened and his vision slowly healed. Pi now knew what his meaning was in life (his existentialism).